We caught the movie, Defiance earlier this week, and it has been weighing on me ever since. I didn’t know the story, and I won’t spoil it for you here, but it’s the kind of film that I love: one that leaves you with more questions than answers, one that doesn’t settle comfortably in your belly, one in which the heroes are equal parts villain. The movie punctuated Clive James’s book Cultural Amnesia admirably well: the horrible tug between Stalin and Hitler, the ethical quandary of an appropriate response to devastating totalitarian annihilation, the persuasive compulsion of liberal humanism.
This week, for the first time, I read Catcher in the Rye. Proof of the story’s success is how frequently I wanted to strangle Holden. But he gets inside you, doesn’t he? Reminds you of the baffling complexity of even the most mundane encounters with other people. Kind of makes me wish I were a better dancer.